FAA Chief Ends His Term This Weekend With No Successor Lined Up

Alan Levin, Bloomberg

- Jan 05, 2018 2:51 pm

Skift Take

By most accounts, Obama-appointed FAA chief Michael Huerta was a competent leader of the nation’s aviation safety regulator. But the new president has a right to name a replacement, and it was highly unlikely Huerta would stay beyond the end of his five-year term.

Federal Aviation Administration head Michael Huerta, who rose unexpectedly to lead the agency in 2011 after the sudden departure of his predecessor, will step down at the end of his term. With no nominee named by the White House to replace Huerta, the FAA’s current deputy administrator, Daniel Elwell, is expected to become the agency’s acting head.

The changing of the guard at the FAA had been set to be one of the least noticed agency shifts during a tumultuous political period in Washington. But Trump put a spotlight on the topic when he tweeted on Jan. 2 that he had been “very strict on Commercial Aviation” and touted the news that 2017 was the “best and safest year on record!”

Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!

The tweet drew waves of scorn, since the only major domestic aviation initiative during Trump’s first year in office was a stalled proposal to put the U.S. air-traffic system under semi-private control. While anti-terrorism efforts are generally considered separately from flight safety, White House spokesman Raj Shah also noted that new screening restrictions on small electronic devices were imposed in 2017.

Huerta, a Democrat nominated by President Barack Obama, has said he has no intention of staying beyond the end of his term. The FAA is one of a handful of U.S. agencies in which the top administrator serves a five-year term to make the position more stable and less political.

When asked after Trump’s tweet about a nominee for Huerta’s position, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “I don’t have any personnel announcements on that front.”

Elwell was appointed as FAA’s deputy administrator in June. A former Air Force and commercial pilot, he’s worked for various airline and aviation-industry groups and had an earlier stint at the FAA from 2006 to 2008.

Huerta, who referred to himself as the “accidental administrator” in a farewell address to the agency in December, had an unusual pathway to the high-profile political position.